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Adam:
> de'i li 2002-11-10 ti'u li 02:45:00 la'o zoi. And Rosta .zoi cusku di'e
>
> >> If you're talking about a different world, then 'su'o' and 'ro' will
> >> quantify over the individuals in that world; this is a different issue
> >> and not relevant to the existential import of ro. I want to make claims
> >> about things *in this world* which may turn out to not exist.
> >
> >I don't understand. Do you or don't you want to claim that they exist in
> >this world?
>
> I don't know whether they exist, but I still want to make claims about
> them
It sounds like you're talking about 'ka'e' things -- things that may or
may not exist.
But I'm not sure if that's what you mean. If you make claims about them
but they don't exist, do you want your claim to be true or false? If
you want it to be false, then you just talk about them as if they did
exist.
> >> For
> >> example, I may want to make a claim about all even prime numbers
> >> greater than 2. (This isn't a great example, but I'm sure that math is
> >> a subject where making claims about things which may turn out not to
> >> exist is very common.)
> >
> >That one's easy: ro da ga na gi
>
> No matter what system we choose, we can get all the possibilities with
> some circumlocution or another. I prefer A-E-I+O+ because it seems to
> be the simplest and most general system
Fair enough. But let's try to be clear about distinguishing "I want
to be able to say" issues from "What does X mean?" issues.
> >That's not a claim about all even prime numbers greater than 3, though;
> >it's more like a claim about things in general, and about the property of
> >being an even prime number greater than 3
>
> The example was not an especially good one, since everyone knows that
> there are no even prime numbers greater than two. The point I was
> trying to make was that one might want to define a set of mathematical
> objects in a certain way, and then prove statements about the members
> of that set before one has proven that the set is not empty. Hence
> non-importing ro
Okay. But assuming that we all want to make the agreed meaning of ro
consistent, we can't take it for granted that you can use {ro broda}
to make statements that are true if there are no broda. As it happens,
though, I've suggested two different schemes according to which
you could.
> >> I may want to say "ro dincfu je du'atce jbopre
> >> cu mutce le ka sidju la lojban." The subject term there is probably
> >> empty, but nevertheless I think it's a true statement, and would be a
> >> true statement if the subject term were not empty
> >
> >If I read that as meaningful, I read it as saying that in a world
> >like this one but with rich generous lojbanists, every single
> >one of them is a great help to Lojban. If you explicitly indicated
> >that you were making the claim only about this world, then I
> >would conclude that you believed there to be rich generous lojbanists
>
> You would conclude wrong, since I have said multiple times that my use
> of ro does not have existential import
I meant to describe what I would conclude on the basis of my current
understanding of the Lojban, not of your intentions. I realize (roughly)
what you would intend it to mean.
> >If I knew that you believed there aren't rich generous lojbanists,
> >then I would have no idea at all what you meant; I'd probably read
> >it as a joke, the point being that it superficially looks meaningful,
> >and seems to be claiming that lojbanists are helping lojban, but
> >when you think further, you realize that that's not the case so
> >read it as a jokey way of saying that no lojbanists are rich and
> >generous
>
> I may not know whether any such people exist. For all I know, there may
> be someone rich giving money to the LLG anonymously or someone has in
> the past. The point is that I neither need nor want to ascertain that
> before making the statement
Okay. I've tabled two suggestions that would work for you, one where
ro is a cardinal, and one where the importingness of fractionals
can be left implicit or made explicit.
--And.